A Distance Widens and Then It Is Crossed

“But the most magical moments in reading occur not when I encounter something unknown but when I happen upon myself, when I read a sentence that perfectly describes something I have known or felt all along. I am reminded then that I am really no different from anyone else.
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Perhaps that is the secret motive behind every library: to stumble upon ourselves in the lives and lands and tongues of others. And the more foreign the setting, the more poignant the event seems. For a strange thing occurs then: A distance widens and then it is crossed.”
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—Hisham Matar from “Books Can Take You Places Donald Trump Doesn’t Want You to Go” from The New York Times
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